Bipolarity
Wednesday, September 29, 2004 , 1:32 PM
This past weekend I went camping with Patrick and Karen. Right after work, we drove north and east through a dark night, listening to music and chatting, following the twisty roads, blinking at the oncoming high-beams. Patrick’s tent was a cinch to put up, its bug-legs snapping into place easily. We made supper over blue tins of gas, then had an early night. I didn’t really sleep, conscious of my cold, not wanting to sniff or blow my nose or breathe on Karen (let alone “spoon” her inappropriately), who was stuck in the middle.
On Saturday we walked through Braemar, the little town a short walk from the campground. It looked like a very old town that had its last surge of development in the 1950s but kept itself nice and tidy since then. We explored the surrounding land, including the beige-plaster-looking wee castle, which seemed more like a theme park feature than a fortress, then walked up through a lovely pine forest on a hill and back to the campsite.
Karen and Patrick left to do some serious hillwalking, but I stayed behind. I was away from the city, and wanted to take the opportunity to disconnect, to unwind then gather myself together. I listened to music, including some little snippets of Tonight’s the Night I’d downloaded fromTim’s website. I looked through the Hello! magazine I bought when we did our shopping the night before. There he was with Ruthie and Lily, right on the cover:
A friend recently mistook my talking about Tim on here as me fancying him, holding a torch. It’s not that. And I’m not jealous, either. He’s a buddy, someone who went through those early poor Bohemian days with me in Toronto. And here he was. I sent him a text message, congratulating him about the article, saying that he’d really made it. Moments later, from wherever he was, he wrote back to thank me (ain’t it neat living in the future?).
Maybe it was the impending birthday, but I felt this need to take stock: “How well are you doing at this life-thing, Hame?” Of course, there’s always more to do. I felt myself slipping, feeling like I was supposed to be published by the time I was 35 (though I don’t know where I got that from). I don’t know how to do relationships, I’m not rich… Maybe things don’t ultimately work out, like I’d always said they do.
But here was my friend on the cover of a magazine, holding the woman he loves and has worked to create a successful relationship with, being fully recognised for all the talent he has. So there it was: you might just get it all if you persist. And if you don’t, you definitely won’t.
So which is it? I thought, which future do you want to go after?
The fun one, I answered myself. I immediately felt excited. I know I’ve got the wherewithal — okay, I’ll dare to use the word “talent” — to follow through when my star rises, and the clarity not to be thrown away by it. I don’t mean “fame and fortune” (I’m too uncomfortable with consumer culture to bite down on that hook). It’s more about knowing that I’ve found my right place in the world. And I’m pretty close.
With a loud zip, Patrick came into the tent. He and Karen were back from their walk. We had our supper together, talked, then played variations on Scrabble (“Scribble”, “Squabble”) into the evening with wooden, lettered pieces Karen brought with her in a bag. I generally hate board games, and thought “Ugh!”, but ended up having a lot of fun; she’s super-bright, so she gave Patrick and I quite a run. Patrick’s a pretty sharp specimen of humanity himself, but, happily, he sucked at the game.
The next day, we explored the Linn of Dee, an amazing waterfall cut through the black rock the way hot water erodes an ice cube. The walls of the little canyon looked like driftwood, and the water swirled and churned in the wild shapes cut out of the rock. You could tell just by looking that the deep, brownish water from the far-away hills would suck the heat out of you and dash you to pieces in an instant.
We went on to another linn in the middle of a forest and walked through the pines there. I found myself at the top of a crest, looking out at the giant hills all around us. Scotland has several different faces, but one distinct character, and I’m in love with it.
We headed back, stopping in Dunkeld for a nice lunch in a bright hotel restaurant, then walking around the ruined shell of a church by a river. The Forth Bridge was under construction, so I barely made it back in time to go walking with the ‘zinesters — a group of creative friends I’ve been meeting with about the possibility of self-publishing something together, featuring writing and photography. The working title is Dunderheid, but that may be replaced with the equally-playful Mince.
We went on a field trip around Cammo, an estate near the house of one of our group’s photographers, Phil. He’s taken lovely pictures of the place before, which you can see on his website.
The estate features a ruined house, a stable that’s largely intact, and a tower that stands like a land-locked lighthouse in the middle of a field, next to a raised grove of trees that’s strangely prominent. It’s easy to imagine Celtic fairy-things from one of Sheila’s stories dancing there by lantern-light in midsummer. (Sheila and Sergio are other writer-members of our group, along with Carol, an artist who wasn’t there for our walk.)
I got back home, exhausted from not really sleeping the two nights previous. The winds had been high, turning the tent into a drum. The second night, I swear I could hear ducks moving around the tent all night, too. We’d seen them during the day, but at night — spooky ducks!
I checked my e-mail, and got two from friends in Toronto telling me “Mikey is dead”. Mike was a young friend — younger, it turned out later, than we’d first believed. He was a little Italian rascal with a cute, narrow, olive-skinned face that always featured a smirk. That expression encapsulated his personality well, and a big personality it was, too. On a number of occasions I wondered aloud about who he’d turn out to be when he grew into himself. But he was found in his bed at university, where he was studying to become a vet, and that’s the end of that story.
I took it hard, partly, I think, because I was so exhausted from not sleeping. I suppose it also reawakened my feelings about losing Alan last year. The questioning I was doing back in the tent came back, and the bottom fell out of my emotional boat: How thick-skinned does a guy have to get? At what point do you stop feeling anything through that skin?
I’ve had a few good sleeps since. What a difference a night makes! I’ve talked to friends I still have, people who really matter. I’ve talked to my family, whom I love with a passion (even if I was a petulant and cranky little five-year-old with them when I was tired). I’m I the library, typing away, listening to one of my best buds singing “You’re In My Heart”.
I can’t help coming back here, to this idea that it’s all for something, that life is meaningful and good. I live here in this incredible place, I do work I love and get paid for it, I’ve been blessed with gifts and a host of great people to spend my life with. I’m off to Paris this coming weekend. It’s all quite beautiful, even the painful parts. As for what hasn’t worked out yet, as my beloved editor Cath said to me yesterday, “That’s what the rest of your life is for!”
It is a happy birthday.
Thursday, September 23, 2004 , 10:34 PM
The soup I made last night? Tastes like vomit. I put too much white wine in it. It’s even orange from all the carrots; it looks just like the stuff I see splattered all over the city on a Sunday morning.
I’m going camping tomorrow after work! This may turn out to be a Very Bad Idea. Given the mates I’m going with, though, if it all goes pear-shaped, it’ll just be funny.
I’m Back!
Wednesday, September 22, 2004 , 11:33 PM
I’M BACK!
I feel like the man in those “Men’s Sex Clinic” ads on the Toronto subway, who’s standing I ocean waves with the legs of his black suit rolled up and his fists held high in the air. The unspoken subtext of the photo is “I can get it up again!”
I have regained my literary boner.
There are times when the mind needs to lie fallow, to rest for a while and regenerate creative energy… Or something. I know this; I’ve been through the process before. That doesn’t mean it’s not worrying, though, when there are long periods of silence, when I try to put words on the page and they slip off like Oreos from a plate.
This evening I shut the main computer off when I finished my day’s work, creating silence in my flat and taking away the main source of distraction. Then I made myself supper. I started with a salad, just lettuce, tomatoes so bursting with flavour it was almost rude, lots of olive oil, salt, and some lemon juice. I cooked some rice and made a sweet-and-sour stir-fry, while also preparing a white wine, carrot, onion, and lentil soup to eat the rest of the week. I made sure to reserve enough white wine for a bit glassful to have with my supper.
I ate in the quiet and thought about the short story idea I’d been playing with last night. Could I get my legs under this one? It required a bit of research, and it might be hokey. Or pointless. Or–
I got the first line. It popped into my head, and I created a file and entered it there. I knew that the thing was as good as done in that moment. The creative ice age has passed, and with it the wooly mammoths of doubt.
I finished my supper, washed my dishes, and dove in. The research nearly knocked me off-balance: maybe I should take a step back, or do something else that wouldn’t need any of this, I thought. I immediately dismissed the idea. I’d started, and I knew that if I could just pull enough cleverness up from the ground I could get the story finished. Partway through, I considered putting it aside and finishing another night. I immediately threw out that idea, too: by now I was having too much fun.
And now it’s finished. The wine glass is empty, I have a Bible (of all things) in front of me, along with a page with surprisingly little outline, my pencil-case, and some books that inspire me, as much from their presence now since I rarely end up opening them.
I knew this would feel good.
Friday, September 17, 2004 , 9:10 AM
Apologies to my friends with Hotmail accounts. I’m not ignoring you; there’s something’s been up with Hotmail for the last fortnight or so that’s causing messages to bounce back to me.
Thursday, September 16, 2004 , 3:46 PM
In case you were missing me, here’s a picture my friendPhil took of me when we were at Rosslyn Chapel (though it’s unfortunately cropped and shrunken from his original):
I also bought tickets yesterday to go to Paris. They werefree. Yeah, crazy. RyanAir charged a token 1p each way, and then the airport taxes brought the price to 26 pounds. I have no idea how they do that, but I’m not complaining!
Actuality
Tuesday, September 14, 2004 , 8:17 AM
The wedding I attended ended up being a blend of both my ‘versions’, with something more besides.
I reached Colchester after making several train connections, then found my way directly to my hotel in the geekiest possible way, using a GPS module and my iPAQ. It’s a bit embarrassing, following around this little glowing thing as it gives me directions, but the technology is there, so I use it. I stepped out of the train station, having never been in this city before, and was able to walk confidently to someplace across town. That works, and I like it.
My hotel was a cute little building with white walls and exposed wooden beams, much like the architecture I saw in Stratford-on-Avon. My room was a little cupola of a thing, but very comfy. (I remember travelling for work somewhere and getting a suite. As Quentin Crisp said of living in a bachelor apartment, “What am I supposed to do with all those rooms I’m not in?”) I asked the woman at the reception desk how I might get to Mistley for the wedding. She’s from there, she told me, but she didn’t know of any way to get there on a Sunday. Oh. Thanks.
I went out for a walk, wondering what to do. Getting in a cab and asking the driver to take me someplace two towns away was a bit frightening. Plus, I’d taken out a fistful of cash back in Scotland; I keep forgetting that the English sometimes refuse Scottish notes. (“They’re easier to counterfeit” is generally the reason given, but apparently this is a load of bollocks.) My friends here tell me to insist that they’re legal tender, but I didn’t relish the thought of having this debate in a taxi in the middle of the Essex countryside. I found a branch of my bank which had a pay-in machine — a real rarity in the UK — so I deposited my money and took some back out in English notes. Sorted! Then as I was buying some snacks to take back to the hotel, I passed a visitor information centre. They’d be open at 11 in the morning. Sorted! So I went back to the hotel and watched TV.
The movie Bulworth was on. I’d been meaning to see it for a while, because Aaron Sorkin’s writing, particularly when he’s focused on political subjects, is second to none. Sure enough, this story was full of dialogue that I actually found an instructional guide to the compromised workings of the American political system. Okay, sure it can be argued that when characters slip into this stuff they leave the realm of believable dialogue, but I’m okay with that. It’s okay for art to be better than life; I don’t think we need to chain ourselves to the rock of verisimilitude at the cost of the power, the beauty, and the imagination that art can bring us. Watching this movie, which is several years old now, it felt as if Sorkin were writing about the current American election. Plus ca change…
In the morning, I got up, showered, ordered an iron from the front desk, singed the collar of my shirt, dressed, and walked into town. The visitor information centre told me of a bus that would take me right to Mistley, so I walked over to the bus station, the bus pulled up, I stepped on it, and the driver took me to Mistley. The weekend went that smoothly. There were several opportunities to panic, but I assumed it would all work out, and it did.
I was early, so I walked around the churchyard, through the town with its malt mill (which seems to be the central industry there), then went to the waterfront, bought an ice cream, and watched the swans. They’re big creatures, and in life their three-toed feet with the rubbery black webbing are strange to see. A man in a blue boilersuit was there with them on shore, his face covered in white stubble. He raked large stones from the waterway, and the pretty swans were to him nothing but pests. He kept chasing them off with his rake, splashing the murky brown water on their white bodies.
The time came, and I went back to the church. Tim’s brother Donovan was an usher, and took me to my seat, then talked to me in rapid-fire bursts about computer graphics work, which he knew I’d done. People think Tim is energetic, but Donovan is an earlier model for some of Tim’s characteristics, and I think the guy has orange juice flowing through his veins! I hadn’t seen him since my early Toronto days, when I shared “The House of Love” with all those other people. Don came to visit us for a month one time. It was fun to see him again, and it sent me back ten years to that time.
I was joined in the pew by Hillary, Tim’s agent, and Sarah from Hello magazine. I’d spotted someone earlier out in the cemetery who had a white camera with a lens like a deep space telescope, and now that I was talking to this woman from the magazine, I had to giggle that my buddy’s wedding had paparazzi. This was Tim, the guy who taught me how to do laundry so my whites stayed white (though I’m back to the bachelor habit of throwing everything in together), who I used to curse for clunking up the stairs in his engineer boots at night, who I used to cook with in our boxers at the Shaw Street house, whose girlfriends I knew.
Now here he was at the church, with his straggly rocker’s hair and the crinkly white tie with the grey waistcoat and black jacket. He’s a star on the West End, and he was marrying Ruthie Henshall, who’s an even bigger name. Now she was coming up the aisle, her pale face beautiful behind a gauzy veil, framed by her dark, almost black hair. You can sometimes see brown in it, like you can with the surface of a mahogany piano. Her dress was a salmony colour with white, lacy fabric over it. And she was several months pregnant. It was all taken in stride, just a fact, since they already have a daughter who’s over a year old.
The ceremony itself was formal in a reassuring way: you want this day to stand above others, like speaking in iambic pentameter instead of free verse. The vicar had a solidity to him, a surety of what he spoke about, yet maintained an affectionate and warm personality. I never felt excluded or put-off by what he said. The vows were traditional, with a few teary moments from both the bride and the groom… and the rest of us, too. I kept bouncing back to those days ten years ago, when we were all poor and either swooning or utterly heartsick, and now here was my buddy having it all work out fine in the end. I wished Jordan was with me, my partner from back then, and I wished Lisa was with me, even though she and Tim were once supposed to be married, back when it was LisaAndTimAndJordanAndHamish. Lisa’s moved on, seen the world with her theatre company, created projects for herself, set up her own home, and entertained other loves. I wondered if it would have brought closure or just upset her.
Outside, we waited with fistfuls of dried flower petals. And waited. And waited. The Hello people had been asked not to take pictures during the ceremony (though the relatives danced around with cameras and videocameras), so we waited while they got their fair share of pictures, then the couple walked through the crowd with much cheering and applause and got into an old-fashioned black Rolls and drove off.
I got a ride with Tim’s agent, a large blonde-haired woman in a purple velour dress. In another time, I would have been beside myself, riding with one of the most powerful talent agents in the country. But I didn’t need anything from her, so we had a great, candid talk about the industry while driving, lost, through the countryside.
The reception was held in a big, white tent on a lush lawn beside a little river. It was picturesque to the point of looking like a location. I met Donovan’s wife, a fun powerhouse of a woman. I spoke some more with the nice Hello woman, who confessed the temptation to write a novel — most everyone does to me at some point, but I like that she was honest with herself about preferring to be out with people doing her job this way, rather than being locked away in a room somewhere, writing pages. Tim’s agent introduced me to Ruthie’s agent (I love that; the bride and groom’s agents), who was dressed like a character out of The Yellow Submarine. “He discovered Charlotte Church,” she told me, “and got her to where she is. Then she fired him to replace him with her mother.” Apparently that’s not going so well for her now. Your mother — how could it?
It came time for supper, so we went inside and took our places in the tent. I sat at what seemed conspicuously like The Gay Table. And yet, there was nothing wrong in that, because it beat the hell out of being at one of the (many) Baby and Toddler Tables. The food was great, a smorgasbord which had lots of options other than the large beasts being sliced with knives. The speeches were funny and authentic, with nothing cringeworthy. Tim’s best mate John Tessier stole the show by being such a big wuss. He kept breaking into tears. Everyone loves that in a straight guy.
And then we were on to the drinking and the dancing. It wound up surprisingly early, with most of the stragglers being the actors from Tim’s show. The band leader finally said, “Okay, who wants to sing?” The first person up was actually Donovan, who sang a song to his wife — and the guy can sing. It makes sense, being Tim’s brother, that he’d come with the same vocal equipment, but it was still pretty impressive to watch. Then the cast members got up and got everything really swinging, belting it out to fill the tent. Years ago, I’d been to a birthday party of Tim’s at a karaoke bar, and there was something a bit off in the way his cast members then were singing. They were young, and something about it felt like a competition, which soured the tone for me. Kara-oke means “empty voice”, and that night the voices were empty, devoid of sharing. On Sunday, though, people sang with joy and huge spirit in order to give everyone a good time.
Then it was over. The van was outside, arranged by Michelle, the couple’s invisible right hand, who’d orchestrated so much of the day I suspect. I got in, figuring I’d get back to Colchester somehow. Tim had asked me to stay another day before he and Ruthie left, and I’d agreed, ’cause I wanted nothing more than to hang out with them. But in the end, I didn’t know how to do it, getting back in town to check out, rearranging my train tickets, and missing work. So I got in the van, bleary from drink, and somehow got back to my hotel with it only costing me six quid. I gave the driver a tenner, shocked that I’d made it through the whole weekend barely having touched my wallet.
And then I rode home, catching trains with the grey-suited, smoking Britons who were commuting back and forth across London through the Underground’s ugly tunnels and valleys of brown brick and bound-up cables like fallen trees. I sleepily watched as the English countryside turned Scottish again, then bought a poke of chips as I walked home from the station. I didn’t, ultimately, manage to work at all because my brain was burnt-out.
I’m a bit late for work again today, but I wanted to get this out of my head and on the page — even though I’ve no idea why anyone else would want to read it. I did manage to write a short story on the train, which was a bit of a breakthrough. I kept scribbling ideas down all day yesterday, so it seems that I’ve managed to un-jam my gears again. Thank God. Or thank the process, that orderly way that everything happens in time. Same thing, I guess.
Holy!
Saturday, September 11, 2004 , 7:50 PM
I’m on the train from Newcastle to London King’s Cross. Flat white industrial buildings fly past the windows, with brown brick housing developments beyond. The sky overhead is a low, cottony grey duvet.
I’m headed to my friend Tim’s wedding.
On the last train, I’d been reading The DaVinci Code. The book contains lots of fascinating factoids; unfortunately, they’re wrapped in clunky, expository dialogue and mechanical plot twists. Still, it’s been a fun read. I reached the last chapter, when… “Error. The book format was not recognized. ID: 24.” Serves me right for getting my copy from an e-books newsgroup.
To pass the rest of the first leg of the trip, I opened up a video I’d encoded for my iPAQ, an amateur comedy show by a trio who call themselves The Lonely Island. There’s something about these young guys I find hilarious. It’s right up my alley, and was a great reminder that every situation contains humour if you’re willing to look at it. Everything’s a matter of framing, isn’t it?
For instance, this wedding. I have to admit that I’ve been dreading it and looking forward to it at the same time, because I’ve had two conflicting mental images of how it’s going to go:
~
Version One
Tim and Ruthie are both West End musical theatre stars. (This actually isn’t part of my imagination: they are.) I show up at their wedding, and it’s full of stunning people. The ceremony is a show unto itself, as the performers take turns performing songs to honour the couple. They turn out to be as talented as they are good-looking. The entire congregation breaks into song, and I join in the musical number. It ends with Tim and Ruthie held aloft as the ceiling of the church bursts with heavenly light.
Afterward, the reception is a funky “place-to-be” party in a giant tent in a field under the stars, and Tim introduces me to these bright young things he knows. Being in theatre, of course every last one of Tim’s male friends is gay (even if he isn’t, the rule somehow still stands). I have my pick, from calendar-hunky leading man studs to quirky best-friend-character types (and choose the latter, of course, because they’re much more interesting). At this point the fantasy devolves into something hot and trashy, or wedding-y romantic.
Oh yeah, and somewhere in here, Tim introduces me to the writer of the show he’s in, saying, “This is my friend Hamish, the one whose manuscript I gave you.” The writer (whose work I haven’t read, but it doesn’t matter ’cause he doesn’t ask) gushes over it. He offers me a heaping platter of cocaine. I give a friendly laugh and decline. He vows to devote himself to furthering my career. A lucrative publishing deal follows, changing my life.
Version Two
I arrive in a taxi at the wedding in my black suit. It’s the one I bought for Alan’s funeral, but I’ve worn a bright, happy tie that makes it appropriate for a wedding. Thank God I’ve got a proper suit, I think as I enter the church, having taken a taxi fifty miles out of the town I’m staying in to reach the tiny wee country town where the wedding is taking place. The other men there are wearing tailored grey morning suits with cravats and gloves (my gloomy, crow-like outfit is off-the-rack). The women are wearing huge, puffy dresses the colour of French mints, and their heads are obscured by matching hats the size of sombreros covered in gauzy fabrics. There are flowers everywhere, and the church is arranged to an extreme of formality. The other guests all recognize each other, muttering approving hello-sounds that sound like “Hongh-hongh” in a very exclusive, posh English accent. I’m afraid to speak and betray myself. When guided to my seat, the usher asks if I’m he!
re with anyone. “No, by myself.” Oh, how sad, says the look on his face.
The ceremony is very Christian. The reception is a polite affair with lots of patterned china and silverware. I’ve been sat next to a skinny spinster aunt with no arms on one side and on the other is a handsome, athletic occipital lobe surgeon who’s just received an eight-figure advance for his series of medical crime books. He’s there with his wife, a woman who has luminous blonde hair, moves with the grace of a cat, and flies to Belarus every fortnight to tend to sick children. We’re served plates of moulded, jellied meat, and all the talk over the food is of relatives and babies and future plans together. From time to time I’m politely asked a question about my life, but my answers make everyone fall silent.
I am a complete alien, a directionless pervert.
~
On the trip down this afternoon, though, it occurred to me that I should throw out these mental images and adopt a different attitude. It doesn’t matter how much it’s costing me to go down to this tiny place, and it doesn’t matter how socially easy or advantageous the event is for me.It’s not about me. My dear friends have invited me to be part of an important rite of passage in their lives. They’re taking their relationship out into the community of people they hold dear, asking us to help make their decision more real by recognising it and helping them carry out the plans they’ve made together. It’s an honour to be invited into that circle.
Suddenly this holy union stuff is a lot more palatable.
And you never know, I still might get laid.
Reformat Your Brain
Monday, September 06, 2004 , 9:07 AM
I have purged.
Yesterday, I finally did it: I backed up all the files on my computer, then reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled the operating system. The machine had been slowing to a crawl, and now it’s all peppy and responsive, as if it were brand new.
It was a bit of a radical thing to do, but it felt good to clean house like that. It was strangely refreshing, and I feel much clearer-headed today, even though doing this had no relevance to any of the heavy thoughts I’d been having.
I lost a couple of things in the process. Everything can be replaced, except, unfortunately, my web browser bookmarks. I exported them, but I guess I neglected to back them up. If you keep a blog or have a website and you read this, please let me know the address so I can re-bookmark it (or I can get the URL in the first place). Thanks!
I’m back to work today! It’s a Canadian holiday, but I’m going to work anyway. Cash is helpful, and I’m excited about getting back into it. I know I can produce work there, which should be a confidence-booster.
~
Last night, I went to Calton Hill and watched the fireworks commemorating the end of this year’s Edinburgh Festival. Several of my friends were there, so there was a nice gang of us sat on blankets on the hillside near the classical stone buildings and structures, looking out at the old city below.
More than one of my friends commented that this was a particularly British thing to do. I asked what made this so — sitting outdoors, eating snacks, drinking wine, being amongst a huge crowd of others to see an event, or sitting under a low cloud-cover like a fort made out of bedsheets. “All of the above,” Patrick told me.
The city was lit with its usual yellow streetlamps and white windows, but the show started (Wendy had a radio, so we heard the broadcast of the orchestra playing in Princes Street Gardens), and the castle erupted in sparks of white, green, and red, with the odd orange, blue, or white ball of light shooting up toward the blanket of clouds and… disappearing. Our crowd on the hill had been “Oooh”ing appropriately, but when the fireworks were swallowed by our indomitable Scottish weather, we all laughed. Explosions we were sure would normally be huge round bursts showed up like nothing more than that brief point of light you see when a lightbulb burns out with a “plink!”
Everyone on the hill seemed to enjoy the half of the show we could see. At the very end, the grand finale, we didn’t see the finishing bursts directly, but they made the entire sky above the city light up with an astonishing brilliance. Karen kept saying how much she felt for the pyrotechnician, but if I’d managed to create that final effect, like cloud lightning over my entire town, I would be pretty proud.
[P.S. Liz took pictures!]
~
On Saturday, I had another nice break: I went to Rosslyn Chapel with my friends Sheila and Phil. It’s in a sweet little town called Roslin (home of the Roslin Institute, where Dolly was created, and of my landlord) — though it’s probably not so nice at night, with the local neds about. The chapel itself is a stunning piece of work. Being inside the church, with all its pillars and arches covered in florets and stars and tiny, intricately-wrought Christian and pagan figures, is like being inside the skeleton of a whale. I didn’t feel it was a particularly ‘powerful’ place, though. The iconography of the figures doesn’t match up with the images in my own spirit: an upside-down angel with a rope around him might represent Lucifer, but that figure has long since ceased to have any meaning for me. It’s like being in a room full of ancient law books — interesting only if you feel compelled by the subject.
And I’m still reading that damned DaVinci Code book. It clips along, but it’s full of lessons for me to learn from — things not to do. I know I did some of them in the second book, but less of that in the third.
Right. Time to work.
Stuckness
Friday, September 03, 2004 , 3:47 PM
I read a review this past weekend of the latest biography of Stephen Spender. I’ve not actually read anything of his, but I’m aware of him, and his association with Christopher Isherwood and WH Auden. The three of them were to Berlin what Hemingway, Stein, and that lot were to Paris. I hate them, because they had the opportunity to be something that — well, you just can’t be that now. It’s “done”, but it’s exactly what I’d love to be.
Anyway, apparently Spender had a habit of telling stories about the people he knew, spilling their secrets out in public. Of course, readers loved this, but the people whose private lives he revealed weren’t so happy. It made me think of my friend Kirsten’s writing, except she tells her own secrets.
I’m sitting in a café in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. I just ate a square that was so full of sugar I feel high. I also bought an orange juice which is that awful concentrate stuff that tastes like rust.
I’m completely stuck. Yesterday I was supposed to work on cover designs for The Willies, then today I was supposed to work on the Hallowe’en article to send to a Canadian newspaper to piggyback on one of Kirsten’s and a short story for this ‘zine I’ve got involved in.
I’ve long contended that there’s no such thing as Writer’s Block. All that is is putting your focus in the wrong place, usually on product rather than process. Thing is, that’s exactly where I am right now. Nothing I can think of to say seems interesting or clever enough. I know I can’t be beaten for description, but that description has to fall within a context, and lately I’ve not been able to provide myself with any contexts. I think of writing something and my legs go all weak.
Weird. There’s a portrait on the wall to my right that’s frighteningly alive and penetrating, even though the surface of the man’s face is covered in blobs of paint like some sort of elephantiasis, or like a sandstone sculpture that’s lost its surface.
To my left is the portrait of a man about my age made up of broad, vague brustrokes. His face is blank, and he wears and open white collar with some kind of loose turquoise tie under a formal black jacket. The harsh red behind him and the stern look on his face make me feel that he’s very confident, and very successful. Next to him, I feel like a loser who hasn’t accomplished anything.
I just looked at the card next to it: “Prowse has been responsible for making the Gorbals-based theatre world-famous for excellence and for the originality of its productions.”
Ugh.
The busboy is cute and a fraction of my age. He’s sitting at a table with three other members of the café staff. They’re all reading newspapers.
I’m generally not a gloomy person, and not given to giving up. I just hate that I haven’t produced anything creative in a while. Whenever I have a day like today when I’ve assigned myself things to do, I get to it and feel like I haven’t anything to say, and I don’t feel like pushing it. It feels like creative dry heaves.
I’m waiting for something big, something so important that its worth can’t be refuted or denied. Of course, this is silly. Every little detail is worth capturing and expressing. But I’ve got critic-voices in my head.
I’ve just had a little champagne bubble of an idea. Gotta go chase it to the surface.
…Damn. It’s already been done, the thing I was thinking of writing. But that’s all it’ll take, I know, one little entryway into that other place where the ideas come from. I’ve lost my map, but I have to find my way back there.
I think it’s time for an enforced diet of reading and reading and thinking and thinking. “Stocking the pond”, as Julia Cameron calls it in The Artist’s Way. There’s an interim place between there and the finished work, and that’s where the writing comes from, it seems: I go off and get these ideas, take them to this middle place, then work on them and deliver them in a finished form. In Celtic mythology they talk of “thin places”, where the two worlds sit close together. I need to find one of those in my life right now.
Of course, this might have something to do with this week’s work. I finished the edits on The Williesyesterday, and was left with this feeling of confusion, like perhaps I shouldn’t invest all kinds of money in publishing it, because it’s not the sort of thing that I’m writing now — that is, it’s not like my last book, which is closer to what I feel is my “style”.
I’ve produced a bunch of work and not yet seen it find a home in the world. It’s making it difficult to generate more, new work. It’s an issue of confidence, I suppose.
That’s enough introspection for now. I’m off to seeHellboy tonight, which should be the mental equivalent of Novocaine — just what I need. And popcorn, my favourite food.
Maybe I need to live more, to have more experiences from which to generate ideas.
I don’t know. I’m shutting up now.
Want
Wednesday, September 01, 2004 , 7:54 AM
I did it: I finally bought Rufus Wainwright‘s Want:Onethis weekend. The price had dropped considerably since it first came out (it seems crazy to pay twenty pounds for a CD here when they’re twenty dollars at most in Canada), there were some songs that I saw on his website that I’d never heard or seen as downloads, and it was just time to buy it, because I’d already enjoyed it enough, and have bought all his other albums to support him.
He’s brilliant: The album is so lush, I can’t get enough of the world it presents.
He’s stupid: The audio links on the secret website that pops up when you put in the disk are either vague because he can’t talk about the person he wrote the song about, they’re full of him not being able to remember the names of the people he collaborated with on the album, or they’re just inane comments. How can someone write such glittering, incisive lyrics and such rich melodies, yet be so inarticulate and shallow?
But I don’t care! He’s a musician. That’s the way he expresses himself, so that’s how I should experience him. Asking someone to deconstruct their work, particularly while it’s still so fresh, is a strange thing to do. In the silent moments when he’s constructing these songs, I just know there’s a touch of genius at play, and it’s a joy and an inspiration to hear. I love the level of risk in his work, the fearless way he stumbles through life and offers up his mistakes, thoughts, and feelings in his music.
I’m looking forward to going to his concert in October with my friend Paul, and feel sufficiently prepared to handle him being silly and gay onstage. God, it’s easy to chase after the greatness of others, rather than grasp hold of the fact that what rings so deep and true, what really resonates harmonically, is a recognition of one’s own potential in it.
~
I’m off work this week, and actually feeling more pressured than ever, because there are so many back-burner projects I want to get finished in the time that I have, things I just haven’t been making much progress on. It’s so sweet to float through the city, though, without a schedule, dropping into a cafe here to work, having lunch with someone or another, then drifting on to do more work or buy a book, then do some editing work in the pub.
The next book in the queue is Magnus Magnusson’sScotland. I figured it was time to brush up on my knowledge of the place, and this is supposed to be very readable, with a good narrative through-line, rather than just a series of dry names and dates. But first I’ve got to finish the awful DaVinci Code — which I had to read just to see what the fuss is about. What I’ve read so far is shitty, amateurish writing, with ham-handed exposition and homework that’s sticking out from the corners of every scene. Somehow, though, it’s still a compelling read, because it has good forward movement.
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p>This Saturday I’m going to see Rosslyn Chapel with my friend Sheila. I should finish the book before then, because I hear its climax takes place there.
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